HC refuses to stay the construction on portion of Rs 40,000 crore Delhi-Katra Expressway

Saurabh Malik

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Chandigarh, June 5

In a significant order, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has refused to apply brakes to the ongoing development of Punjab section of Delhi-Katra expressway, including green field connectivity to Amritsar.

“We do not find any ground whatsoever to grant any interim relief at this stage to scuttle the project namely ‘Development of Punjab Section of Delhi-Katra Expressway including green field connectivity to Amritsar’,” the Division Bench of Justice Lisa Gill and Justice Ritu Tagore have asserted.

The Bench also fixed July 10 as the next date of hearing on the petition filed by Darshan Singh and 126 other petitioners. Assisting the Bench in the matter, counsel C.S. Bagri contended that residential houses of the petitioners and certain other structures were being demolished without “supplementary award being passed for compensation with regard to the structures”.

Senior advocate Chetan Mittal with counsel Abhilaksh Gaind, Rakesh Roy and Mayank Aggarwal, on the other hand, contended on the behalf of the National Highway Authority of India that there was only one residential house. Its main structure was “outside the alignment”. Only the boundary wall was “falling in the alignment”.

The Bench was also told that supplementary award had been passed by the competent authority regarding the boundary wall concerned. A table was also provided in the court regarding the other structures, such as tube-well and bore-well, which were claimed by the petitioners to be in existence.

It was added that some of the petitioners had not even put forth their claim regarding the structures, if any. In other cases, the award for the structures stood passed in June/August, 2022. The Bench was also told that the project was of national importance.

The Rs 40,000-crore project is proposed to be a 669 km, four-lane, access controlled green field expressway. It will purportedly reduce the travel time from Delhi to Chandigarh to two hours and Delhi to Amritsar to four hours.